According to a magic spell gaining momentum across the U.S., the text at the end of this article serves as an incantation aid to bind the current U.S. President. New Orleans, along with multiple cities across American joined together in a mass binding spell this past Tuesday (May 23rd) in an effort to figuratively tie the hands of President Donald Trump.

Alex Mar’s new book, Witches of America, is a search for meaning, esoteric and otherwise. She takes her reader on a spiritual cross-country road trip from the Bay Area of California to New Orleans, from the prairies of the Midwest to woodsy little towns in the Northeast. She introduces us to some of the different disciplines in this new kind of faith—Feri, Wicca, Ordo Templi Orientis—whose names sound almost beyond language. With the writer as a proxy, readers experience ritual, spell-casting, initiation, all of it striving for connection to the divine principle that, for most of us, remains so elusive. Throughout Mar proves an intelligent, candid guide.